Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Dragana Drobnjak Nes, Pal Berg-Hansen, Sigrid A. de Rodez Benavent, Einar A. Hogestol, Mona K. Beyer, Daniel A. Rinker, Nina Veiby, Mia Karabeg, Beata Eva Petrovski, Elisabeth G. Celius, Hanne F. Harbo, Goran Petrovski
Summary: This study aimed to compare the retinal vessel diameters and retinal oxygen saturation between newly diagnosed patients with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) and a healthy population. The results showed that the retinal venular and arteriolar diameters were smaller in pwMS compared to healthy controls, while there was no significant difference in retinal venular and arteriolar oxygen saturation. Retinal arteriolar and venular diameter may have potential as objective biomarkers for multiple sclerosis.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Saeed S. Alqahtani, Toufique A. Soomro, Nisar Ahmed Jandan, Ahmed Ali, Muhammad Irfan, Saifur Rahman, Waleed A. Aldhabaan, Abdulrahman Samir Khairallah, Ismail Abuallut
Summary: This study proposed a five-step technique for assessing the impact of retinal blood vessel coherence on segmentation. The proposed technique achieved good performance in processing retinal image, handling uneven illumination and noise issues, performing grayscale conversion, and applying different filtering methods. The method was validated on STARE and DRIVE databases, showing high sensitivity and accuracy.
Article
Clinical Neurology
Snorre Malm Hagen, Elisabeth Arnberg Wibroe, Johanne Juhl Korsbaek, Mikkel Schou Andersen, Asger Bjornaer Nielsen, Mathias Just Nortvig, Dagmar Beier, Frantz Rom Poulsen, Rigmor Hojland Jensen, Steffen Hamann
Summary: Retinal vessel dynamics analysis is a promising non-invasive method for detecting elevated intracranial pressure. This study tested the application of this method in patients with suspected idiopathic intracranial hypertension. Results showed a significant correlation between arteriole-to-venule ratio and lumbar opening pressure, with higher correlation at pressures exceeding 15 mm Hg. The estimated cerebrospinal fluid pressure based on arteriole-to-venule ratio predicted elevated lumbar opening pressure with high sensitivity and specificity.
Article
Ophthalmology
Sandy Zhou Wenting, Ankita Shrivastav, Trupti Gilada, Xin Le Ng, Sean Ng, Chun Hau Chua, Shibjash Dutt, Sundaram Natarajan, Rupesh Agrawal
Summary: The study aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 infection on retinal microvasculature by mapping the retinal arteriole-to-venule ratio (AVR). A comparative cross-sectional case-control study was conducted using fundus photos from COVID-19-infected patients and healthy controls. The retinal vascularity index (RVI) was measured at 16 points across the retina, and localized greater RVI values were found in some points in COVID-19-positive patients.
OPHTHALMOLOGY AND THERAPY
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Alexander Ze Hwan Ooi, Zunaina Embong, Aini Ismafairus Abd Hamid, Rafidah Zainon, Shir Li Wang, Theam Foo Ng, Rostam Affendi Hamzah, Soo Siang Teoh, Haidi Ibrahim
Summary: This paper introduces an interactive blood vessel segmentation method from retinal fundus image based on Canny edge detection, allowing for semi-automated segmentation of specific vessels by moving the cursor across them, which helps to focus on details or detect abnormal vessels.
Article
Engineering, Biomedical
Debasis Maji, Souvik Maiti, Ashis Kumar Dhara, Gautam Sarkar
Summary: This paper presents a robust Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture for grading diabetic retinopathy, which can effectively handle noise and variation in retinal fundus images. The proposed architecture outperforms standard architectures like ResNet50 and VGG16, and achieves promising results in grading the disease.
BIOMEDICAL SIGNAL PROCESSING AND CONTROL
(2022)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
K. V. Chalam, Joud Chamchikh, Suzie Gasparian
Summary: This paper describes the optical principles and utility of an inexpensive, portable, non-contact digital smartphone-based camera for acquiring fundus photographs, providing an effective screening tool for retinal diseases in various clinical settings.
Review
Automation & Control Systems
Qing Qin, Yuanyuan Chen
Summary: This paper offers a comprehensive review of retinal vessel automatic segmentation research, including both traditional methods and deep learning methods. In particular, supervised learning methods are summarized and analyzed based on CNN, GAN, and UNet. The advantages and disadvantages of existing segmentation methods are also outlined.
ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
(2024)
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Salma M. Boubakar Khalifa Albargathe, Ersin Kamberli, Fatma Kandemirli, Javad Rahebi
Summary: This study utilized the H-minima transform for blood vessel segmentation in retinal images, achieving good results and performance. The method showed remarkable performance on pathological retinal images, with an average accuracy of 0.9591 and 0.9672 for STARE dataset and DRIVE dataset respectively. The running time of the method was 1 second per image.
MULTIMEDIA TOOLS AND APPLICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Nora Abdullah Alkhaldi, Hanan T. Halawani
Summary: This article proposes a new model for retinal blood vessel segmentation and classification based on fuzzy edge detection, which utilizes contrast enhancement and feature extraction to achieve segmentation and classification. The performance of the model is validated using benchmark dataset, and a comparative study shows the improvement over recent approaches.
CMC-COMPUTERS MATERIALS & CONTINUA
(2023)
Article
Biochemical Research Methods
Fengting Liu, Wenhui Huang
Summary: This paper proposes a unified framework called ESDiff to address the challenges in clinical fundus images by integrating retinal image enhancement and vessel segmentation. The experiments on publicly available fundus retinal datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of ESDiff compared to state-of-the-art methods.
BIOMEDICAL OPTICS EXPRESS
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Lukman Hakim, Muthu Subash Kavitha, Novanto Yudistira, Takio Kurita
Summary: This study proposed a blood vessel segmentation method based on Euler characteristics from topology, which introduced the number of isolated objects as a regularizer to improve the connectivity between pixels of vessel regions and enhance the reconstruction performance of vessel regions. The results show that the proposed method exhibits higher accuracy and reliability in diabetic retinopathy (DR) detection.
PATTERN RECOGNITION LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Biology
Yubo Tan, Shi-Xuan Zhao, Kai-Fu Yang, Yong-Jie Li
Summary: The geometric morphology of retinal vessels reflects cardiovascular health and fundus images are important for ophthalmologists. This study proposes a new network, DMF-AU, to perform thin vessel segmentation, addressing issues such as thin vessel breakage and false-positives in areas with lesions or low contrast. The proposed model, incorporating a differential matched filtering layer, feature anisotropic attention, and a multiscale consistency constrained backbone, performs well compared to other algorithms on several specially designed criteria for vessel segmentation.
COMPUTERS IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Shotaro Asano, Takehiro Yamashita, Ryo Asaoka, Yuri Fujino, Hiroshi Murata, Hiroto Terasaki, Naoya Yoshihara, Naoko Kakiuchi, Taiji Sakamoto
Summary: The study aimed to investigate retinal vessel shift (RVS) patterns in approximately 25% of junior high school students over a two-year period, and found an association between RVS and axial length elongation.
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Hao-Chiang Shao, Chih-Ying Chen, Meng-Hsuan Chang, Chih-Han Yu, Chia-Wen Lin, Ju-Wen Yang
Summary: Due to high labor cost, it is difficult to collect a rich amount of manually-labeled medical images for developing learning-based computer-aided diagnosis systems or algorithms. To address this issue, the researchers propose an image-to-image translation-based retinal vascular segmentation network that can achieve good generalizability even with limited training data.
IEEE JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL AND HEALTH INFORMATICS
(2023)
Article
Orthopedics
Hiroyuki Inose, Tsuyoshi Kato, Shoichi Ichimura, Hiroaki Nakamura, Masatoshi Hoshino, Daisuke Togawa, Toru Hirano, Yasuaki Tokuhashi, Tetsuro Ohba, Hirotaka Haro, Takashi Tsuji, Kimiaki Sato, Yutaka Sasao, Masahiko Takahata, Koji Otani, Suketaka Momoshima, Masato Yuasa, Takashi Hirai, Toshitaka Yoshii, Atsushi Okawa
Summary: This study identified high VAS score, MRI T2 fluid-intensity image pattern, and lower anterior vertebral body compression percentage as significant risk factors for residual low back pain 48 weeks after OVFs. Patients with these risk factors should be closely monitored for the development of chronic low back pain.
JOURNAL OF ORTHOPAEDIC SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Hiroyuki Inose, Tsuyoshi Kato, Hiroaki Nakamura, Masatoshi Hoshino, Daisuke Togawa, Toru Hirano, Yasuaki Tokuhashi, Tetsuro Ohba, Hirotaka Haro, Takashi Tsuji, Kimiaki Sato, Yutaka Sasao, Masahiko Takahata, Koji Otani, Suketaka Momoshima, Kunihiko Takahashi, Masato Yuasa, Takashi Hirai, Toshitaka Yoshii, Atsushi Okawa
Summary: This study investigated the predictors associated with poor quality of life improvement after osteoporotic vertebral fractures (OVF) in 166 women aged 65-85 years. Older patients with severe low back pain and fluid-intensity T2-weighted MR image patterns were more likely to have lower quality of life improvements after OVF and may require additional support.
QUALITY OF LIFE RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Orthopedics
Takaomi Kobayashi, Tadatsugu Morimoto, Chisato Shimanoe, Rei Ono, Koji Otani, Masaaki Mawatari
Summary: This study developed a screening tool for the loco-check to detect different degrees of locomotive syndrome. The cut-off values, sensitivity, and specificity of loco-check scores can help people roughly understand and assess the severity of locomotive syndrome.
JOURNAL OF ORTHOPAEDIC SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Orthopedics
Takaomi Kobayashi, Tadatsugu Morimoto, Chisato Shimanoe, Rei Ono, Koji Otani, Masaaki Mawatari
Summary: This study aimed to construct a simple screening tool based on the 5-question Geriatric Locomotive Function Scale (GLFS-5) to detect Locomotive Syndrome (LS-1, LS-2, and LS-3) diagnosed with the 25-question Geriatric Locomotive Function Scale (GLFS-25). The results showed that the optimal cut-off values of the GLFS-5 total score can be used to discriminate the severity of LS, with high sensitivity and specificity.
JOURNAL OF ORTHOPAEDIC SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Ophthalmology
Yuto Yoshida, Koichi Ono, Takatoshi Tano, Yoshimune Hiratsuka, Koji Otani, Miho Sekiguchi, Shinichi Konno, Shinichi Kikuchi, Masakazu Yamada, Shunichi Fukuhara, Akira Murakami
Summary: A study on a rural Japanese population found that their normal cornea is prolate, with corneal eccentricity likely to decrease with age and influenced by other anterior segment parameters. Corneal eccentricity measurements could be helpful in diagnosing corneal diseases and in calculations for intraocular lens implantation and corneal refractive surgery.
OPHTHALMIC EPIDEMIOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Hiroyuki Inose, Tsuyoshi Kato, Shoichi Ichimura, Hiroaki Nakamura, Masatoshi Hoshino, Shinji Takahashi, Daisuke Togawa, Toru Hirano, Yasuaki Tokuhashi, Tetsuro Ohba, Hirotaka Haro, Takashi Tsuji, Kimiaki Sato, Yutaka Sasao, Masahiko Takahata, Koji Otani, Suketaka Momoshima, Takashi Hirai, Toshitaka Yoshii, Atsushi Okawa
Summary: This study aimed to investigate the factors contributing to residual low back pain in the chronic phase after osteoporotic vertebral fractures (OVFs). The results showed that nonunion independently contributed to residual low back pain at 48 weeks post-OVF.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Tadatsugu Morimoto, Hirohito Hirata, Koji Otani, Eiichiro Nakamura, Naohisa Miyakoshi, Yoshinori Terashima, Kanichiro Wada, Takaomi Kobayashi, Masatoshi Murayama, Masatsugu Tsukamoto, Masaaki Mawatari
Summary: This study analyzed the incidence and clinical features of infective endocarditis (IE) in patients with vertebral osteomyelitis (VO). The prevalence of IE in patients with VO was found to be 12%. There were no significant differences between the VO-IE co-infection group and the VO-only group in terms of clinical features, microorganisms, or radiographic status. Lack of specific clinical features and laboratory findings may hinder the diagnosis of IE in patients with VO.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Takaomi Kobayashi, Tadatsugu Morimoto, Koji Otani, Masaaki Mawatari
Summary: This systematic review investigates the relationship between locomotive syndrome (LS) and lumbar spine disease. The results show that GLFS-25 is associated with low back pain, sagittal spinopelvic malalignment, and lumbar spinal stenosis, while GLFS-5 is associated with low back pain and lumbar spinal stenosis. Loco-Check and Two-Step Test are associated with low back pain, sagittal spinopelvic malalignment, and lumbar spinal stenosis, while the Stand-Up Test is not associated with lumbar spinal stenosis. The total assessment is associated with low back pain and lumbar spinal stenosis. Further investigations are needed due to insufficient evidence on this topic.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Koji Otani, Shin-ichi Kikuchi, Takuya Nikaido, Shin-Ichi Konno
Summary: The study aimed to investigate the influence of dural tube compression on the presence and development of lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) symptoms, as well as the prediction of surgery during the follow-up period. The results showed that severe dural tube compression did not persist symptoms and could not predict symptom development and surgery.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Takahiro Igari, Koji Otani, Miho Sekiguchi, Shin-ichi Konno
Summary: Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is a significant health issue in aging societies, as it can greatly impact quality of life and daily activities. This study aimed to examine the 10-year progression of LSS symptoms in a community population of over 1000 individuals through prospective data collection. The findings revealed that the presence of LSS symptoms at the initial survey was a strong predictor of symptoms after 10 years. However, 60% of individuals who initially presented with LSS symptoms did not continue to show symptoms at the 10-year follow-up, consistent with the 1-year and 6-year findings.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Hiroshi Kobayashi, Koji Otani, Takuya Nikaido, Kazuyuki Watanabe, Kinshi Kato, Yoshihiro Kobayashi, Shoji Yabuki, Shin-ichi Konno
Summary: This study aimed to develop a straightforward and accurate diagnostic tool for degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) by combining the grip and release test (GRT) and grip strength. The results showed that this novel diagnostic support tool had good sensitivity and specificity for early DCM diagnosis.
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Junichi Handa, Koji Otani, Takuya Nikaido, Shin-ichi Kikuchi, Shin-ichi Konno
Summary: The relationship between nocturnal leg cramps and lumbar spinal stenosis in the general population is unclear. This study investigated the prevalence and characteristics of nocturnal leg cramps in LSS in the community, finding a direct relationship between dural tube compression (determined by DCSA) and the presence of leg cramps, though no significant differences were observed based on typical LSS symptoms or neurological findings.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GENERAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Biology
Takaomi Kobayashi, Tadatsugu Morimoto, Chisato Shimanoe, Rei Ono, Koji Otani, Masaaki Mawatari
Summary: This study aimed to determine the cut-off time for the one-leg standing test (OLST) as a screening tool for assessing the severity of locomotive syndrome (LS). A cross-sectional study was conducted on 1860 community-dwelling residents who underwent the OLST and completed the geriatric locomotive function scale (GLFS-25). Multiple regression analyses and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis were utilized to analyze the data. The OLST was found to be significantly associated with the GLFS-25 score and LS, and optimal cut-off times for different LS severity levels were identified.
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Kazuaki Uchida, Yuya Ueda, Junya Nakamura, Shunsuke Murata, Tatsuya Endo, Koji Otani, Rei Ono
Summary: This study aimed to investigate the impact of car use on the onset of social frailty among older adults in rural areas and examine whether this effect varied depending on their level of locomotive function. The findings showed that older adults who drove a car had a lower likelihood of developing social frailty, particularly those with low locomotive function.
JOURNAL OF TRANSPORT & HEALTH
(2023)
Article
Geriatrics & Gerontology
Mari Sato, Ryoji Tominaga, Noriaki Kurita, Miho Sekiguchi, Koji Otani, Shin-ichi Konno, Naoyuki Oi
Summary: This study aims to investigate the relationship between dysphagia and motor function using a simple assessment method, and to promote early detection and prevention. The results suggest that skeletal muscle strength and dynamic balance function are associated with dysphagia in older people.
GERIATRICS & GERONTOLOGY INTERNATIONAL
(2023)
